Electronic devices, such as portable media players, storage devices, tablets, netbooks, laptops, desktops, all-in-one computers, wearable computing devices, cell, media, and smart phones, televisions, monitors, and other display devices, navigation systems, and other devices have become ubiquitous in recent years. Many of these devices now communicate wirelessly. In fact, many users may prefer to have devices communicate wirelessly to avoid having to make connections between devices using cables and other wires.
Also, it may be desirable to reduce the number of connector receptacles on an electronic device. These connector receptacles consume area along an outside of a device, consume space in the device, add costs, detract from the device's appearance, and form leakage paths for water and other corrosive fluids.
Accordingly, many devices currently rely heavily, if not exclusively, on wireless connections to other devices. Wireless communications may include the transfer of files and data that may be used by programs and applications on the device. Other wireless communications may involve relatively large files. These files may be firmware files, system updates, and other such files. These files may often be transferred to a device during manufacturing and testing of the device. For example, these files may be used to initially program the device. Since these files are large, their transfer to a device may consume a great deal of time, thereby slowing the manufacturing process and increasing costs.
Also, wireless communications may not be as robust as wired communication. Errors in wireless data transmission may be more likely than wired data transmissions. This may be due to environmental and interference factors, which may require re-transmission of faulty data packets or re-programming, thereby further increasing manufacturing time and costs or user time and effort. For these reasons, it may be desirable to have an alternative wired signal path that may be used by either or both manufacturers and users that is simple and low cost to implement.
Thus, what is needed are circuits, methods, and apparatus that may provide a wired communication path that is simple to implement and does not greatly increase costs and complexity of a device's hardware and software.